How To Make Yourself Flexible

Stretching increases your flexibility and helps loosen your muscles and tendons. Watch this VideoJug film to get tips on how to become flexible.

In this video, I'm going to talk to you about how to become flexible. Now, essentially if you want to become more flexible, you have to stretch. Now, it can get quite complicated, you have dynamic, static, active, passive, PNF, there's all kinds of different types of stretching available to you.

All you have to think about first is, why do you want to get more flexible? Is it for sport? Is it so you can do the splits? Is it not to get injured? Because that will actually affect what type of stretching you can do. Having said that, I'm going to show you some basic fundamental stretches and the kind of things you need to think about when you're actually doing them. Consider first the hamstrings which are for the tendons at the back of your leg, these will really easily pull if you run a lot.

I'm going to put my foot on the bench, then I lean forward and I feel it pull at the back of my leg and also a bit on my calf. A lot of the time when you are stretching, you can't just isolate one muscle group or one set of tendons, you're usually working a few at the same time, that's fine. Now, what I'm looking for, I'm looking for a level of pain which is just about bearable, so if I have a scale of 1-10, 1 being easy, 10 being excruciating, I'd go for like a level 8 or 9.

And once I've got that, I want to hold it. If I just want to have a maintenance stretch, I'll hold for 30 seconds. If I want a developmental stretch, actually if I want to get my tendons longer, I'll be holding for two minutes.

Another thing to consider is, what areas do you want to stretch? You can stretch your entire body, but the point is you should stretch where you're tight. Now, for most people who sit down in office whole day, it tends to be their hips and back. So I'm going to show you an exercise which is really good for loosening up the hips in particular.

I lay my leg down, sink down this opens up the tendons and the muscles along your glutes and around the hips. Again, I'm looking for 9 out of 10 and I hold 30 seconds to maintain it, that's for you to see, or longer up to 2 minutes, if you want to increase flexibility. Two key things to remember - make stretching quite intense like 9 on a 10 level and also make sure you stretch for the parts of your body which is quite tight.

In particular, for most people, the hips or this area is much more important than stretching your shoulders or your forearms or your ankles. Another tip, take up yoga, some tactic for stretching on your muscles, and these are some tips to become more flexible. Stretching increases your flexibility and helps loosen your muscles and tendons.